DayofPal—Israeli soldiers have described widespread lawlessness and arbitrary attacks against civilians during the war in Gaza, exposing a collapse of discipline and moral restraint within the Israeli army.
Their testimonies appear in Breaking Ranks: Inside Israel’s War, a new ITV documentary airing Monday evening in the UK.
“If you want to shoot without restraint, you can,” said Daniel, a tank commander who served in Gaza.
He and other soldiers, some speaking anonymously, describe an environment where civilians were killed on the whim of individual officers and long-standing codes of conduct were ignored.
Captain Yotam Vilk, an armoured corps officer, told the programme that the army’s standard engagement rules, allowing soldiers to fire only if a target has the means, intent, and ability to cause harm, were abandoned entirely in Gaza.
“There’s no such thing as ‘means, intent, and ability’ in Gaza,” Vilk said. “It’s just suspicion — a man walking where he’s not allowed, aged between 20 and 40.”
Another soldier, identified as Eli, said that decisions about life and death were determined by “the conscience of the commander on the ground,” making the designation of who was an enemy effectively arbitrary. “If they’re walking too fast, they’re suspicious. Too slow — also suspicious,” he said.
Eli recounted one incident in which a tank was ordered to demolish a building in an area designated safe for civilians because a man was spotted hanging laundry on the roof.
“The officer decided he was a spotter,” Eli said. “He wasn’t. He was hanging laundry — and the tank fired anyway.”
A Guardian analysis in August found that 83% of those killed in Gaza were civilians, though the army disputed the findings. More than 69,000 Palestinians have been killed since the start of the war, with casualties continuing even after a month-long ceasefire.
The soldiers’ accounts corroborate persistent allegations that the IDF used Palestinian civilians as human shields, a practice informally known as the “mosquito protocol.”
Daniel described how civilians were forced to walk through tunnels with phones strapped to them, transmitting GPS data for the army. “After about a week, every company was operating its own mosquito,” he said.
Several soldiers recalled commanders and rabbis framing the entire Palestinian population as legitimate targets.
Maj Neta Caspin said a brigade rabbi urged soldiers to “take revenge on all of them, including civilians.” Rabbi Avraham Zarbiv, an ultranationalist cleric who served more than 500 days in Gaza, defended the destruction of Palestinian neighbourhoods, claiming: “Everything there is one big terrorist infrastructure.”
The documentary also includes testimony from a contractor, “Sam,” who worked at aid distribution sites run by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF). He said he saw the Israeli soldiers shooting unarmed civilians and tanks targeting civilian vehicles.
“You could just see two soldiers drop to their knees, take two shots — two heads snap backwards and drop,” he said.
According to UN figures, at least 944 civilians were killed near GHF aid sites. Both the army and GHF deny intentionally targeting civilians. Internal army investigations have resulted in virtually no prosecutions.
For some soldiers, the experiences in Gaza left lasting moral and psychological scars.
“I feel like they’ve destroyed all my pride in being an Israeli — in being an IDF officer,” Daniel said. “All that’s left is shame.”
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